


Somewhere, when it mattered

by Kuro_Ko



Series: Maybe, in a different life [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Ingrid Rarepair Week (Fire Emblem)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27064453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuro_Ko/pseuds/Kuro_Ko
Summary: Ingrid didn't move.She was there.Mercedes had to be there.On the other side of the battlefield in the Tailtean plains.Ingrid Rarepair Week 2020
Relationships: Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Mercedes von Martritz
Series: Maybe, in a different life [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2011939
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	Somewhere, when it mattered

Ingrid never thought red and black would be her colors. She never believed she'd raise her blade against the ones she once thought she'd protect, she never understood how deep beliefs ran until she heard her own battle cry, her voice thundering the hopes of a change in the world that Edelgard offered with her raging fires and her steel will.

The strong wings of her steed soaring over the battlefield, dodging arrows and magic beams alike, diving to the earth Luin in hand, ending lives and watering the soil with the blood of the ones she had called friends before. Ingrid thought her legs would be weak after those days, she thought her hands would tremble and her stomach would churn and her very essence would be revolted and corrupted.

She had killed her fellow countrymen.

She had killed dozens of them, hundreds maybe. Through five years of endless battles and savage war, she had spilled their blood in the name of the Empire and the new dawn of the continent. She believed in a new Fódlan, and she believed in dying for a cause she saw just. She believed an honorable death was to be found in the battlefield if she was to give her life for what she believed, for who she had bowed loyally based on what her heart told her was right instead of what she had been taught.

Ingrid, in red and black, soared the sky as the winged blight of the Adrestian army. A batallion at her charge capable of turning the tide of battles, of decimating legions. The ride of the Black Eagles Pegasi was to be feared, was to be faced, was to be resisted.

They always fell. Ingrid knew, they always fell to her lance.

And yet, her body had never rebelled against her. Maybe her very essence had changed as well and she hadn't realized.

Maybe.

Perhaps that day would be no different. 

It was rainy.

The Tailtean plains.

The rain droplets bounced from her mare's feathers, they rang in her armor and soaked her cape. They sang the song that soon they'd be dancing too.

The rain was just the prelude to the inferno that was to come. A cold, frozen hell that would embrace them all, that would hit them all.

Ingrid was silent, their mounts still on the ground, the skies waiting for them to watch the last flight of some, the red edge of their blades when the battle started. Her mare shifted their shared weight from hoof to hoof. Her hands, covered by plates and steel gauntlets wouldn't move, holding the reins in a tight fist.

They soon would be called to the sky.

They soon would be pointed to their enemies by sword and axe.

The last bastion of the Kingdom, the last stronghold they could hope to keep before the Empire assaulted Fhirdiad.

The rain fell over them as equals, from far away the soldiers seemed the same, two sides facing each other over causes that were lost to the earth and the sky. The rain, never silent, fell over them all the same as one.

Ingrid didn't move, droplets getting caught in her hair and falling slowly, relentlessly, timelessly. She had been in the same position hundreds of times. She had faced these feelings since her first year in the monastery, since the first moment she had to take a life in command of others. She had faced them even before, in the harsh land she called her own. In her hometown where food was scarce and life tough and she was a pawn to be sold to the highest bidder.

Ingrid didn't move, Freya did, neighing softly, biting the bit of the reins and stretching her wings. She could feel it too, the call of the sky, the whistle of the wind that would make the rise. The electricity in the air, crackling and waiting for the first sparkle to ignite, for the first spell to be called to explode.

Ingrid didn't move.

She was there.

Mercedes had to be there.

It had been years since the last time she had seen her. Ingrid had spent so many nights alone, the moon her companion and the silence her answers. So many nights in the unknown territory of the Empire, nights at Enbarr, vast and bustling, nights on the road, scouting fields that had gone too long without being harvested, nights in the monastery, her old room mocking her memories of what had been pure and true and now was ethereal and unreachable.

So many nights alone with the memories of a childhood she had been forced to leave behind.

Mercedes’s room had been covered in dust when she stepped in it after all those years. The battered furniture was still there, silent testimony of what had been lost, what had been done, what had been said and promised. Ingrid had looked at it from the threshold of the door, stepping in only when her eyes had adjusted to the change of light. She had walked to the center of it and had seen herself and Mercedes years ago, when she was too oblivious, too naive, too blind to see what the other girl had tried to tell her based on gestures and little actions alone.

Ingrid had looked at the corner of the room where the bed rested and had remembered.

She remembered

The sun had been gentle, despite the harsh winter that ravished the land near the Oghma mountains. Ingrid had thought that it wasn’t close to being as harsh as it could get in the Kingdom. She had noticed how the other students from the Blue Lions had walked around that weather easily, comfortably. Mercedes hadn’t been an exception, she had been as sweet and persuasive as always.

Her smile had been tender and gentle, like the sun in winter basking the land for the students from the other nations that looked for it like rain in the middle of a drought.

Her eyes were intelligent. Ingrid had never exactly known what they hid, what they said, but she had seen herself in them and had smiled.

Mercedes was gentle, tender, calm and open like the sun of winter that basked the land once more when Ingrid sat in the bed covered in dust and looked around, still dressed in full armor and with wounds that should be tended to.

Mercedes had done that in the past, she had dressed her wounds and had healed her bones. She had traced her scars with delicate fingers. Each scar, one by one asking with the softest of voices how she had gotten them and what had she defended for each of them. What had been worth putting herself in the line of fire.

What had been worth trading her life for.

Her eyes, once more, had hidden things Ingrid couldn’t comprehend but she wanted to understand. Mercedes, tender and gentle and warm like the sun in spring when the land came back to what it was, had been full of mysteries she wanted to unveil one by one and never ever truly stop.

At some point, Ingrid thought, she had wanted to be her knight.

What a ridiculous idea had been that one, hadn’t it? A knight for a commoner with no house and no land to speak of.

Her fists were clenched so hard she could hardly feel them anymore.

There was no place for such infatuations in the world they had lived in. In the world, she fought so hard to end and transform.

Mercedes, who had silenced her with a kiss and a smile when they found each other in the Goddess tower. When Ingrid still believed in chivalry and she finally understood why her heart quickened. When she saw Mercedes when they crossed paths toward their classrooms. When they shared meals. When they spent time together on the open gardens of Garreg Mach.

Ingrid, in red and black attending the Black Eagles class, would still go every day and find Mercedes in the Blue Lions room, waiting for her, a smile gentle and tender and open like the sun in summer when the earth replenished itself and the storms brewed the omen of bountiful harvests.

Mercedes had kissed her. She had kissed every scar, she had listened to every story, she had learned from Ingrid all she had had to offer.

She had been gentle and tender and open and yet…

And yet.

“General Galatea, the Kingdom’s army is here.” Ingrid blinked and saw the boy, barely an adult, dressed with the armor of the Empire and holding the Adrestian banner. “The Emperor and the Professor have called everybody into battle formation.”

“Understood.” She straightened up, her mind coming back from daydreaming of what had been left behind in a world that was never to be the same as it was. “Black Eagles Pegasi, we ride!” She spurred Freya; the pegasus took flight in a powerful, purposeful jump, her wings carrying them into the sky. Dozens of flyers followed them, keeping a tight formation as they gained altitude. The battlefield showing its true form beneath them. 

The blue banners on the horizon slapped violently as the wind picked up and the rain wasn’t gentle rain, battering them and hitting them mercilessly. In the center of it all, in a stronghold that would be a nightmare to get to, Dimitri organized his troops, yelling orders she couldn’t hope to hear and could just expect Edelgard and the professor to outsmart.

Mercedes had to be there.

That was the last stand, the last battle of the Kingdom’s army. Faerghus would go without a king that day if the battle was to be in their favor.

Ingrid had kissed Mercedes many times after that one at the Goddess tower. She had kissed her before going to her bed. She had kissed her when they had wandered lazily in the town nearby the monastery. She had kissed her when Mercedes had baked her more cookies she could eat and she had kissed her when Mercedes giggled. It had been the most precious, beautiful sound in her world.

And in response Mercedes had kissed her, she had kissed her when Ingrid came back from the training grounds, worked up and out of breath, she had kissed her when she had protected her in the battlefield, hurt and wounded by the blades of enemies they hadn’t truly known yet. She had kissed her under the moon and had caressed her cheeks as if they were the true treasure life had to give.

It took time to get used to flying on top of a pegasus. Even more when the wind was against them and the weather was poor. Fighting on top of one was for the ones that didn’t fear the always present danger of plunging to the earth in what could be a violent end. It was for those who could combine their minds and hearts with their steeds as one, those who wanted to ride the wind and call themselves their master.

Flying and fighting on top of a pegasus was the very gesture of braveness and madness. The mark of a flyer who could destroy enemies and dodge projectiles in a graceful maneuver that was equally beautiful and deadly.

Ingrid, commanding her battalion, wreaked havoc in the Ferghus’s flank.

Their advance was terrible and swift, their mounts capable of taking to the sky and diving back again before archers could down them or spears could find them. They were devastating sword wielders and mages alike, effectively keeping the army from reorganizing and regrouping. Ingrid, letting go of the reins and standing on her stirrups, used her knees and body to make Freya take a sharp turn to the right, Luin in her hand was deadly and precise, slashing through the messenger that tried to get away in an effort to reconnect with the bulk of the army.

The woman died with a gasp and a muffled cry, her face in the mud of the Tailtean plains.

Ingrid never saw her face.

It had mattered, those kisses, those caresses, words that rang true and felt right in her chest. It had mattered when Mercedes dressed her wounds and kissed her afterward.

It had mattered when Mercedes had called her name after class and something had blossomed in her chest and her heart.

It had mattered when Mercedes had taken her hand, kissed her knuckles and called her a dreamy knight.

It had mattered.

On the other side of the battlefield, through a heavy curtain of water, rain and wind, Ingrid spotted the shape of a mage that used faith magic.

Her heart sunk to the bottom of her belly.

It had mattered to her, those days.

Those memories.

Those moments.

But the world had changed and they had made their minds so very different that it didn’t even seem possible. How could it be possible for two people that loved each other to pick sides so differently?

How could Mercedes remain and Ingrid leave?

How, when it had mattered and they had loved each other?

Mercedes, strong and powerful, soaked by the rain and tainted by the mud of the battlefield, looked intimidating as she never had to Ingrid.

Had it ever mattered? When was this truly about their feelings and not about their convictions? Their ideals? Ingrid didn't have the answer. She feared she'd never had it. She feared she was to always carry the weight of the questions that burdened her shoulders and burned her chest. She feared she was never to know what was meant to give her peace.

Luin, pointing toward the sky, was the only truth that mattered on the battlefield.

Ingrid pointed it toward her enemy, her heart bellowing inside her, twisting and churning, a crying beast she understood so well and yet couldn't stop to listen to.

On the battlefield, meters below her, Mercedes waited, her hands green and yellow and white, faith magic that was ineffective against pegasus. Faith magic that needed to land on its target first.

Ingrid had always been too quick for Mercedes when she had an objective in mind, hadn't she? Her body, her muscles, her very essence too wild to be contained, too reckless to be predicted. The chivalry code had given her guidance, yes.

What happened when she bent her knee and accepted the Emperor's blessing, leaving behind the Kingdom's ideas of a knight?

What happened when she tossed aside everything she had held dear, everything that had given her meaning and guidance and, instead, she embraced what was meant to revolutionize the world and set her own strength free?

She spurred her mount and they both descended from the sky like thunder and lightning, like the wind in the middle of the desert, like snow sharp and cold when the blizzards hit her hometown back at Galatea. Luin was the only truth that mattered on the battlefield, its blade the words that would ring true when everything was said and done, its edge the one that would tell the story of winners.

Its edge the final resting place for those who fell following ideals that wouldn't see a new dawn in Fódlan.

What had happened to the dreamy knight that dreamed of serving her fair lady? The commoner that should’ve been a noble and had been cast aside?

Ingrid couldn’t answer.

Ingrid couldn’t say.

It had mattered to her.

It mattered to her.

And yet…

And yet, she failed.

Freya landed gracefully, her usually spotless white feathers and coat covered in mud and blood that wasn’t hers or her rider's. Ingrid needed to hear her at least once more, she needed to tell her what her heart screamed and her voice didn’t find the strength to say. Ingrid wanted her once more.

Just once more.

But, again, it was Mercedes the one that took the first step. Mercedes who knew very well Ingrid had failed that plunge and thrust in purpose, the one that turned on herself so quickly following the flyer’s trajectory and waited, biting her tongue to hold the spell she had been casting seconds ago.

Mercedes who had watched her bring her mount to a stop in the air and then, carefully, descend. The battlefield around them silent, the Imperial army marching forward and trapping the Kingdom’s army in that last stronghold. Ingrid’s battalion leaving behind a trail of bodies and enemies to be mercifully killed.

They had left, pushing forward, to where the first Faerghus soldiers considered a retreat. Ingrid, the general, the commander, the warrior, had been left behind to deal with one of the most dangerous mages in the Kingdom.

Mercedes von Martritz.

“Ingrid… I’m glad to see you again.” Her voice was the same, Ingrid noticed, feeling a painful jab at her side. She grasped Luin thither and tried keeping her expression neutral.

They were at opposite sides of a war that had consumed their continent.

“I wish I could say the same, Mercedes” That didn’t feel right. She had never called her Mercedes after that first kiss, she wished to call her Mercie, she wished for her name to roll out of her lips with a happy voice and a content heart.

The rain over them never stopped.

“Now, now. You know that these things happen in war...” Her smile was gentle and tender, and open.

It was wrong.

It had never been like that when Ingrid had kissed her before. It had never been like that when they were at the academy years ago.

Mercedes was lying to her and, maybe for the first time, Ingrid could see through it. She looked at Mercedes’s eyes and saw things she thought she’d never discover in them. She saw pain, she saw loss, she saw desperation.

She saw her resignation.

That was it? Mercedes was ready to face her because she had decided to lay her life on the battlefield of the Tailtean plains?

Luin trembled in her hand.

“It isn’t too late, Mercedes. Join the Empire. It is futile to try to oppose us now...” Ingrid heard the words and they rang hollow to her. She had never been a good speaker, she had never had a way with words. And now she only had them as a last resource to try to swing the one she still loved to their side. “Please! I don’t...” She couldn’t bring herself to say that last part.

She didn’t want to kill her.

She didn’t know if she could kill her.

Mercedes’s smile didn’t change, her eyes didn’t tell a different story, her resolution hadn’t diminished in the slightest,

Ingrid couldn’t understand why would she prefer to die under her blade rather than live in a world free of those who had opposed them.

Freya moved anxiously behind her, feeling the danger in the air and worrying that her rider was still on the ground, far away from where she could truly protect her. Far from the sky that was their home and their turf.

“What good have crests ever done to your life? Why do you keep fighting a war that you’re bound to lose?!” Ingrid took a step closer, beware of how the faith magic ran through those fingers that had cared for her wounds instead of causing them. “Mercedes!” Her call was a scream and a plea.

Ingrid hoped.

She hoped and waited.

But a plea fell barren to the ears of the one who had decided many moons ago.

“You know I can’t turn my back on those who cared for me, Ingrid.”

“They never cared about you! They used you! They tried to marry you off! Mercedes, please!” The rain covered the hot tears that trailed down her face. Ingrid didn’t remember when she had started crying.

Luin was still the only word that seemed to matter on the battlefield.

“Please step back!” Ingrid knew she was running out of time.

They were both running out of time.

“Maybe, in another life, we will be together, Ingrid. When life is less complicated. Don’t you think it’s a good dream?” Mercedes smiled once more and raised her hand, faith magic running in her hands yellow and white. The divine punishment the goddess had given her to strike down her enemies.

Ingrid didn’t care about another life. She didn’t care about dreams and futures that weren’t to be hers. She didn’t care for her mare behind her neighing a warning and the spell that she knew would come for her, striving at her chest as the last resource to bring her down. To give Ingrid a reason to strike Mercedes down.

She didn’t care for any of that.

Mercedes was quick, her magic powerful, her intentions clear. Her feet shifted and her magic cracked the air around them, warming the freezing wind in the Tailtean plains. She tried to gain the upper hand in a battle that her country had already lost.

Yet, Ingrid was quicker.

Ingrid, who had grown up with devotion in her heart, who had listened to the teachings of the church, who had experienced faith magic in her own flesh and had found ways to resist it. Who had given her skin willingly to the priest to kiss her and now to kill her.

Ingrid, who had listened to the teachings of a thousand years and had cast them aside in favor of her own beliefs and for a better life.

Ingrid, who walked toward the future at a quicker pace.

The strike of magic, burning the air and evaporating the rain grazed her, a new scar in her cheek was marked by fire and power. Ingrid didn’t feel it, she couldn’t, for in that moment there was only one thing that mattered.

Luin.

Luin, pointing toward her enemies, was the only word that mattered on the battlefield that evening. And its aim was true and its thrust deadly when her arm lunged forward, following the same path she had taken hundreds of times.

Redoing a motion she had practiced thousands of times.

With a wide, precise swing, born out of instinct and practice, Ingrid struck Mercedes down.

And her blood, warm and gentle, painted the edge of the blade alongside the blood of a dozen soldiers Ingrid had killed that day on the battlefield of the Tailtean plains.

Her cry was muffled by the wind, the rain, and the noise of an army that had just stroke a king down.

Ingrid didn’t care they had won. She didn’t care that her childhood friend had died in the stronghold he had refused to abandon. She didn’t care that the church had been defeated once more.

Mercedes had failed on purpose, and she had repaired her with a deadly blow.

Was that the woman, the knight, the warrior she wanted to become? Was that the person she had become after so many years of revolting against old ideals and outdated traditions?

The sour, bitter aftertaste in her mouth wouldn’t be rinsed by water or wine. The metallic taste of blood covering her tongue and anchoring to a reality she despised.

Ingrid took Mercedes’s limp body and stowed in Freya’s strong frame. She hopped on her pegasus and didn’t think of anything else. Her flight was madness, her mind in disarray, her body ached as if the wounds had been in her skin instead of Mercedes's.

She had to make it, she had to make it.

She had to make it.

She had to make it or else.

Everything she believed she was capable of, everything she thought she could ever do and accomplish.

Everything she regarded as everything was a lie when it came to Mercedes.

Ingrid hadn’t been able to wound her out of her own volition, she hadn’t been able to convince her to join them, she hadn’t been able to stop Mercedes.

Freya darted through the sky, defying wind and rain alike.

She had to make it.

Or else the world she intended to create would be a void of words that were never born and feelings that would never blossom.

Feelings that had been born under the sun of Garreg Mach, five years ago or more, when Mercedes had been introduced to her as her fellow classmate and her smile had been tender and open and gentle. When she had treated Ingrid as something more than her classmate, than a noble, than a crest bearer, than a silly kid with knight dreams.

When she had learned to love her under the changing sun of Garreg Mach.

Ingrid remained there, merely a shadow, a husk, of the general she had become. Of the war hero that had helped to win the war. The pegasus rider the Emperor herself had recognized and given a title to. Her mind wandered, time shapeless and meaningless those long hours. Her mind wondered.

It wandered back to her home in Galatea, to her old house that had seen better days. To the mountains that she had seen every day when waking up and training in the backyard of her house.

To the cold winters that stopped her breathing when she stepped outside and marked her fingers when she clenched her practice lance and strived for something she couldn’t even dream of becoming.

To home.

She would never have a home if it wasn’t with Mercedes, no matter where, no matter when. It had mattered to her.

It had mattered to her.

And now?

She was about to lose it all.

The rain at the Tailtean plains was unforgiving, unchanging, immemorial.

“Ingrid… Ingrid!” She blinked again, looking up from the seat she had taken outside the healers’ tent; the afternoon had turned into night, and her armor was cold, her cape was soaked and her limbs numb. She had been there for hours, waiting.

Waiting for an answer.

Waiting for a verdict.

Waiting for a word.

Dorothea looked at her, her green eyes were riddles to be resolved. Not by Ingrid, however. Not by Ingrid who could barely think and whose mind was a maze she didn’t know the exit from.

“She’ll recover.” Dorothea kneeled next to her, putting a warm hand on Ingrid’s shoulder. Ingrid blinked once more. “She’ll recover. Edelgard has agreed to keep her as a prisoner and we should take her back to the monastery once we can.”

“She…”

“She’ll recover. You made it in time…” Dorothea’s smile was reassuring. She had seen the state Mercedes had arrived, she had seen her friend’s face contorted by pain, screaming for a healer, for a doctor, for something, Mercedes’s limp body in her arms. Dorothea had seen Ingrid’s desperate eyes, Ingrid’s devastated expression when somebody had taken Mercedes away from her arms and into the tent she had no access to.

Dorothea had seen her foolish friend, so brave in battle, so oblivious to her feelings, crumble upon herself and cry the tears she hadn’t when they had parted ways years ago.

Ingrid’s eyes filled with tears.

Dorothea opened her arms and let her cry her pain and her grief and her relief in her shoulder. Mercedes would live, she would be fine, she would recover and her voice would be gentle and her smile kind and her hands warm. Even if those were never to be hers.

Even if Ingrid wasn’t the one Mercedes chose.

She would live and the memories could, someday, be new memories again instead of the old precious things she had clung to so hard in the past hoping for a better future.

Mercedes would live and that alone was enough for Ingrid to breathe and strive for something more.

Something better.

She sobered up quickly, rubbing her face with the black part of her gauntlets and thanking Dorothea. Freya had stayed next to her, covered in mud and blood, and still dressed with the heavy armor she wore for every battle. Ingrid looked at her loyal companion and bit down another wave of pain and relief.

Later.

Later.

She took the reins and left to the stables, ignoring Dorothea’s questions to see Mercedes.

Later.

Ingrid would fight the last of the war. She would go through that last battle, soaring through a burning sky, Luin in her hand striking her enemies down.

And then.

When the day was gone. When the revolution was complete when the new dawn had come.

Then.

Only then.

Ingrid wept.

And tried.

Ingrid tried, for Mercedes lived and they were free to be whoever they wanted to. Despite the past, despite the present, despite the memories, they shared sweet and bitter and sour and gentle.

Ingrid tried.

For Mercedes lived and there were no reasons to weep on the new dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why did this come to my mind. I'm just...
> 
> I can't thank enough Lina for proofreading this at the speed of light!
> 
> Be safe!


End file.
